Too Many Museums and the Right Amount of Ponies

At the end of our Michigan trip, bf and I weren't quite done with vacation just yet. We had been planning a long camping trip this summer, but instead, decided to go explore a new city since we were already going to be traveling. We had done this in Portland over New Years and it was a blast- stayed at an AirBnb near public transportation, go to some museums... but this time I had other things in mind: blogger meetup.

When I was in DC, one of the people I missed seeing was Jan! We literally missed each other by a day or two. I've been talking to Jan for a while now, maybe over a year? Two years? I dunno. But it was ridiculous that she was in Maryland like JUST before I was there.

So off to Pennsylvania we went! We stayed just east of Pittsburgh and it was an absolute blast.

Pittsburgh!

View from the Cathedral of Learning

So many bridges

Wednesday we landed around 3 and took a cab downtown. We mostly spent the afternoon/evening wandering around the immediate area surrounding our AirBnb. I had snagged us a really awesome little basement apartment just east of the city that was walking distance to a lot of stuff and super close to the bus line for all the other stuff. 

The immediate area was great- it was just a strip mall, but it was so close and really great to wander down. We landed at a great little Mediterranean restaurant for dinner. There were a ton of restaurants to choose from, but bf's coworker who lived there for a while warned us against trying to find Asian or Mexican food that rivaled those in the bay area. We pretty much exist on sushi, Korean, and tacos at this point, so we struggled a bit. But the restaurant was SUPER good and actually everything we ate was delicious. 

Following dinner, we wandered down to the Rite Aid to get a few things we had forgotten. I saw umbrellas and thought about getting one. But like, come on, it's July. They were fifteen dollars. That's too much to pay for an umbrella in July. 

Obviously hanging out with this guy was on
my list of things to do

Thursday we had in our schedule our first museum. I had also talked to Jan about riding with her that night, so on the way to the museum, we stopped to hand off my boots to her. Talk about how awesome the blogosphere is, Jan and I have never met and I just handed her my beloved tall boots and the rest of my riding stuff (minus my helmet, couldn't fit that in my luggage!) and took off. But I feel like I've met enough people in the blogosphere who all know each other where I trusted that she wasn't some weird person who faked an entire blog about horses just to get at some moderately priced tall boots. 

And like meeting all of the other bloggers I've met so far (I think I'm over ten now), it was like meeting up with an old friend. 

The museum we went to was the Andy Warhol museum just north of the city. It was AWESOME. I highly recommend it. Some of it was... interesting... like the 90 minute black and white silent film of one naked butt wiggling, twerking, and dancing around. Butt quality wasn't the best, and I really don't understand this kind of art, but you know, butts. I had the most fun snap chatting videos of it to my SIL and just being like BUTTS. But really, a lot of the museum was really fascinating and you should go even if you question whether you'd like the butt video.

Silver clouds at Andy Warhol

Barn kitties!

From there, we went to eat lunch at a local pub. While we were eating, it casually poured a huge amount of rain down outside. It didn't stop. No one else seemed to care. I was sitting there with my mouth hanging open as people just got out their umbrellas, or didn't. There was one guy in shorts and a tank top jogging by completely soaked head to toe. Uhhhhh. So now I felt like an idiot sitting in the restaurant in shorts and a tank top having scoffed at a fifteen dollar umbrella the day before. I'd have paid fifty dollars for that same umbrella in that moment. 

We uber-ed to another Rite Aid and bought two umbrellas. The Rite Aid put us slightly closer to Jan's office, but we had some extra time so we took our time wandering back. I left bf enjoying a drink at a bar nearby while Jan and I hopped on the bus to head out to the barn!

Rain, what the fuck

PENN

We talked young dressage horse woes and general pony talk all the way out to Jan's beautiful barn. This is now the third east coast barn I've been in and it's adorable. I love how horses are kept on the east coast, it makes me feel a bit bad for TC in his little paddock back at home (but he is better off than a lot of west coast horses so too bad, pony). 

Her barn is small and everyone I met is SO NICE and it's just beautiful out there, I had serious barn envy. Not that my barn isn't wonderful, but the east coast barns are so centralized and I love the idea of only dealing with weather when you walk into the barn and out of the barn. Even though our weather is nothing in comparison to Pennsylvania's. Evidence: it rained on me in July. Several times. No thank you. 

I found out that Jan had arranged for me to ride the most adorable little Morgan. He was basically an east coast Sunny. We got tacked up and decided to ride in the indoor (our plan had been to do a trail ride but no dice as it was raining). I had so much fun riding the pony! We worked transitions and straightness for him, and I got to work on my sitting trot and my tracking-left issues. I realized how much easier it was to work on these things on a smaller mover! Even just having more steps per circle to adjust made it easier to get him aligned. 

Trail ride!

View from the top of the trail

The BEST pony

After our ride in the ring, we saw that it wasn't raining anymore, so we rode up to the ridge with a couple of Jan's awesome barn mates! It was beautiful up there. You could see the rolling hills and all the fog between them. The clouds are so much cooler out on the east coast. My trusty Morgan was foot perfect out there. I seriously loved riding him. I don't do basically any catch riding these days, so I can feel really weird on horses that aren't TC. But this guy was just FUN. Reminded me a lot of my favorite Ginger pony. 

After the barn, Jan and I, being the classy individuals that we are, stopped at a gas station for food. No but seriously I've never been to a Sheetz and it was delicious. I'm actually really glad that there aren't any out here because I think it'd start to make up more than half of my diet. 

Frozen hot chocolate + caffeine on Saturday,
yeah we went back

On Friday, bf and I decided to go to another TWO museums: the Carnegie Natural History Museum and the Carnegie Museum of Art. Had they not been in the same building, we'd probably have just gone to the first one. I'm not the most excited about your typical art museums. I have to be in the right mood I guess because modern art can REALLY annoy the hell out of me. And sure enough by the time we made it to the art museum, I was hangry, which inspired me to primarily sit and read blogs while bf wandered around. 

The Natural History Museum was beyond amazing though (we did that one first, so maybe that's where I used up all my excited-about-museums feelings). There was a HUGE room dedicated to dinosaurs, which was definitely my favorite part. But the rest of it was amazing too. I realized I had never really seen a weasel before... and I took a long time to tell bf all about zorses because he had heard that zebras were hard to train.
 

After the museums, we headed out to eat at a little shack kind of thing... it was right near a gigantic building that turned out to be the Cathedral of Learning, a building part of the University of Pittsburgh. It literally looked like Hogwarts. We snuck in and zipped up to a viewing deck on the 36th floor. The viewing deck wasn't all that fancy, but it did get us some cool views of the city. 

Dinosaur!

I started just wandering around the art museum
finding and taking pictures of all the horse things

HOGWARTS

Saturday was our last day and I abandoned bf once again to go ride. I'm glad he's an introvert too, because I never feel bad ignoring him to go ride, he finds things to do on his own. 

The first thing we did at the barn was go see the baby goats that were just born over the 4th of July! Oh man, these things are ADORABLE and if I could have, I would have put one in my pocket and brought it home with me. We also saw the pigs and chickens on the farm in the back of the property. I love farm animals, and they were all so sweet. 

After heading back to the barn, we tacked up to ride. I got to ride my little Morgan again, who was super good and clearly retained some of the stuff we had done. I practiced more sitting trot and more tracking left for a bit, then Jan and I switched horses and I got to ride Penn! 

Baby goat!!

Seriously taking this one home

Also wanted to take this dog home to share with L

Penn is (exactly, now that he's measured) a couple of inches smaller than TC, but he felt a little giant after I had been riding the little guy. He was basically the complete opposite ride of TC, so I struggled to find my bearings at first. But then we were off. His lateral work is really easy, too easy! I definitely have been doing more lateral work the last few days with TC to try to get a little more of that feeling in him. Penn is definitely more of a physical ride than TC, so I was embarrassingly sore the next day. Serves me right, I need to hit the gym!

We swapped back after I played with Penn and then went on a short trail ride again. I was so excited to trail ride- I'm really bummed that I have to wait so long to get on the trails again on TC, so this was a nice break. 

Jan was SUPER nice, like beyond nice, to drive us to the airport. We flew to Phoenix, then flew back to the bay where we apparently had to go around a storm system (where the fuck is it raining between Phoenix and the bay area?) that delayed us. I managed to sleep in a position that bf described as how the hell did you sleep like that you looked supremely uncomfortable. But hey, sleep. 

Penn! I meant to crop this... 

You already heard how my first ride back on TC went. Overall it was a ridiculously good trip! I'm glad to be back home, though not for long. Bf and I are going to visit his parents this coming weekend.